


Cigarettes On The Roof

by noodlerdoodler



Series: An Ode to Aphrodite [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Homophobic Language, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, POV Third Person, Sexual Content, Terezi Pyrope Isn't Blind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:28:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25632832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlerdoodler/pseuds/noodlerdoodler
Summary: “What happened?” You venture but she just shrugs and shakes her head, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. As if she didn’t scale a drainpipe just to see you.
Relationships: Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket
Series: An Ode to Aphrodite [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858108
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	Cigarettes On The Roof

It’s one of those hazy summer days, where time seems to drift by as a cloud, and she heaves herself out of the pool in what feels like slow motion. She flicks her damp hair over her shoulder and droplets of water fly through the air. Her shirt clings to her shoulders and chest, exposing her pitch black bra and sticking to her thighs. A wicked grin spreads across her face as she wraps her arms around your shoulders and pulls you, shrieking, back into the pool with her.

Under the water, you hold your breath and admire the way her hair floats in the water. It reminds you of the painting you’d studied in English last year, of Ophelia’s singing as she sinks into the water, but in a less dead way. You kick upwards and break through the surface, spluttering with laughter and aiming a shove at your girlfriend. Even now, the words don’t feel concrete somehow- your girlfriend- as if it’s just another story you made up with Nepeta Leijon. 

“Bitch,” You laugh, treading water, but she just pokes her tongue out in retort and relaxes into the cold water. She floats on her back, gazing up at the iris blue sky, and bathing in the rays of light that are streaming through the trees of her backyard. You can’t help thinking how perfect the temperature is: warm and comfortable without being sticky and humid. But more than anything, you feel warmth blooming in your chest as you watch Vriska close her eyes.

She almost hums the words, “You pushed me in first. You got what was coming.”

“Bitch,” You repeat and she snickers in response, her chest shaking with laughter. Mimicking her pose, you allow yourself to sink into the chilled water of the pool and laze on your back. Raising one hand to shield your eyes from the sun, you can’t help feeling that everything has fallen perfectly into place: this summer has been the best of your life, tangled in Vriska’s arms, and even if high school is lurking around the corner, there’s only one more year to get through. Then, you’ll be off to college and cruising through your law degree; starting your real life. 

A shadow falls over you and before you can peer up to see what it is, you catch the crisp tone of her voice. Vriska’s sister stands over you, on the side of the pool with a tower thrown over her shoulder, and says with her arms folded: “Party’s over, dykes.”  
You wince at the sharpness of the word, exchanging an anxious glance with your girlfriend as she rises out of her relaxed stupor: she just rolls her eyes at you and kicks her way towards the edge of the pool, pulling herself up and out. As she’s wringing her hair out, you look back to Aranea and she’s staring you right in the eye. Her eyes seem to pierce right through you and despite the heat, you shiver and break your gaze away quickly to swim after Vriska. 

Whatever she says, Aranea doesn’t know anything for sure, that’s what your girlfriend tells you repeatedly. Nobody knows what’s going on between the two of you, not for certain, and as far as most people know, you’re just close friends. You’re definitely not ashamed of whatever you are or the time you spend with Vriska, which feels better than anything you’ve ever felt before. But you know what happens to homos like you around these parts- you’ve seen Karkat Vantas getting his head kicked in behind the school, spitting blood as he peels himself off the floor. 

You feel happiest with your girlfriend but you don’t always feel safe when you’re walking home from the bus stop after school. It always feel like you could be jumped any moment. You’re always glancing over your shoulder, making sure nobody’s following you, and keeping a steady pace until you reach your street. All it could take is somebody catching the two of you a little too close and that would be it for you. You wonder if Vriska would stand by you or throw you under the bus. 

A few nights later, you’re flipping absentmindedly through the TV channels with one hand and eating chips with the other when you get a phone call. Latula, home from college for the summer, answers with a “sup” and listens to whatever the other person is saying with her hand on her hip. Then, she holds it out to you and says it’s one of your friends calling about debate club. Puzzled, (debate club won’t be starting up until school does), you slide off the couch and take the receiver. 

Unsurprisingly, it’s not really debate club. It’s your girlfriend calling and her voice sounds softer than usual, as if she doesn’t want to be overheard, asking if she can come over. You’re about to ask Latula if it’s okay when your girlfriend stops you abruptly, cutting you off.

“Don’t tell her,” Vriska almost sounds like she’s begging, “Just pretend you’re talking debate or something. I’ll see you later.”

You hang up the phone even more confused then you were before but play it off like it’s nothing. Unsure of when Vriska’s coming, or the reason that she wants to keep it a secret since she’s stayed over hundreds of times before, you keep up a charade of normalcy with your older sister. For dinner, she orders in pizza and you watch TV while you eat it, half-listening for a knock on the door. Eventually, you tell your sister that you’re turning in early and smuggle a few slices into your bedroom, startled but un-phased to find a girl sitting on your bed.

The window is slightly ajar, a late summer breeze bringing in the scent of oranges and sound of cicadas, which explains how Vriska got in here at least. She must’ve scaled the drainpipe and pried the window open just enough to slip through; you wonder how long she’s been sitting on your bed, her legs crossed as she flips through one of your newer comics half-heartedly. 

Closing the door, you hold out a slice of pizza to her and flop onto the bed beside her, pressing your back against the wall. She doesn’t look visibly upset but that doesn’t tell you anything. Vriska isn’t one of those people that sobs and pours her heart out whenever she’s upset. More often than not, she’ll just stand there with a stoney unreadable look on her face and wait for the moment to be over. Rather than explode, she keeps everything balled up inside like a tightly clenched fist and, if she feels the need to, she quietly plots her cold revenge. She takes the pizza and tosses the comic aside, refusing to look at you as she picks the pepperoni off. 

“What happened?” You venture but she just shrugs and shakes her head, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. As if she didn’t scale a drainpipe just to see you- or to escape something else. When she doesn’t offer anything, you sigh and shift position, laying your head on her lap. She twirls and untwirls a lock of your hair around her finger, tugging your hair out of its ponytail so that she can play with it properly. She spends the night in your bed, between you and the wall, and presses her head into your hair. You curl into her embrace, listening to her breathing even out. 

It happens a few more times over the summer and even as her arms are wrapped around you, it feels like a wedge is slowly growing between the two of you. A silent, nameless monster is sandwiched between the two of you but she won’t talk about whatever it is that’s bothering her and you aren’t able to pry any information out of her- a lousy lawyer you are. 

You manage to talk Latula into spending the night at her boyfriend’s house at the start of September, right before your senior year is due to start. Before Vriska can even get in the door, your lips are on hers and your tongue slides wet and hot into her mouth. She grips the doorframe to keep her balance as you grab hold of her shirt and pull her close, suddenly desperate to have her as close as possible. Stumbling backwards, it feels like you’re devouring her as she closes the door and your hands push their way up her shirt. Vriska moans urgently into your mouth. 

Now, you’ve done this so many times that you no longer need her to lead you and you push her down onto the couch, yanking her shirt off over her head. She’s scrambling to undo her belt and wriggle out of her jeans as you kiss her harder, pinning her down dominantly. Bratty as ever, Vriska growls and nips at you as you slip your fingers under her bra to play with her nipples. Pain bursts from your lip as her teeth dig into the soft flesh and you let out a whine of pleasure, complying with her silent command as you begin sliding down her body. You plant kisses on her neck and chest, running your tongue down her stomach and pulling at her boxers with your teeth. 

“You slut!” Vriska mutters, arching her back in pleasure as you lick her clit, and it sends delighted shivers down your spine. She’s already so wet that your tongue slides easily into her and you begin to explore her love canal, making her beg to come. But you continue to play with her, working her up into a frantic state, before you return to teasing her engorged clit with your tongue as well as your teeth. Gasping frantically and crying out your name, she cums in your mouth and you continue to run your tongue along her clit as it contracts. At the same time, you slip your hand into your panties and stroke yourself urgently, grinding against your hand. In spite of your efforts, (or due to them?), she orgasms for the second time before you cum yourself. 

As you’re lying on top of her on the couch, you feel closer to her then you have for the last few weeks. You can smell the cinnamon on her breath, the scent of her sweat, and almost taste the intoxicating smell of her sex. Quietly, you rest your face on her stomach as the crashing tsunami of the orgasm recedes into small waves of pleasure, feeling like your body’s full of pleasant static. You rise and fall with the rhythm of her breaths and find your sight fixed on the window, where twinkling stars are peering through the blinds. Bathed in moonlight, you lift your head lazily to look at her and find her gazing back at you, love softening her eyes. Everything fits into place.

This year, you don’t share any classes with her, which is going to be a total drag- she’s slipped down from AP classes to regular ones. You don’t even have the same lunch period but it’s okay because your old friends have forgiven you. Karkat was the last one to come round but once Vriska started punching him friendlily on the arm, rather than hard in the face, he seemed to come to terms with the fact this arrangement was permanent. So, at least you won’t have to eat your lunch alone in the girls’ bathroom again, like you did after your mom passed away. 

Most of the time you spend with her is outside of school. Unlike you, Vriska has her license and her mom splashed out on a car for her birthday, making her pretty cool even if she is an alcoholic. You don’t have to ride the bus anymore as she picks you up early in her car and the two of you cruise around the town, watching the sky turn from orange to blue. Sometimes, she takes you for coffee or breakfast. Sometimes, she parks down a back alley and you make-out furiously in the backseat of her car, hoping no drunks happen to stumble down this way. 

She drives you home after school too, though it grows increasingly later as the two of you pick up more and more extracurriculars to fill out your applications. Well, you do at least. Vriska is more inclined to hole up somewhere to smoke and do her homework as she waits for you. Debate team, she still takes part in, but it grows increasingly difficult to keep away from each other. You forget that you can’t squeeze her hand in silent support or grin like a lovestruck idiot when she uses her flow just like you taught her to. Eyes are on you constantly. 

Every now and again, you tag around with your friends at the mall or the arcade. They don’t outright say anything about you being in love with Vriska but you’re pretty sure that some of them definitely suspect, if they don’t know already. Nepeta has developed a habit of ducking behind her hands to giggle whenever she sees the two of you together, her eyes alight with mischief. But you trust your friends not to snitch on you at least.

On one of these afternoons, just after school lets out, the group of you are at somebody’s house passing around a bong. To your left, Nepeta abstains but you’ve found out that weed mellows you out considerably and enjoy how relaxed it makes you feel, so you take a puff before passing it to Vriska. For whatever reason, the conversation turns quickly to college because what else are seniors thinking about? When you start talking about your dream college, everyone explodes into a chorus of “we know”s and “what’s new?”s. You guess you’ve been talking about law forever- your mom was a big-shot lawyer before she died and you’re desperate to follow in her footsteps. You can’t imagine going into Liberal Arts like your sister did. 

Vriska laughs easily but not in a mean way, wrapping her arm around you. You’re almost in her lap, melting into her side, but you’re high enough that you don’t even care if anyone’s looking. With everyone’s eyes on Karkat, who is talking empathically about college being a scam, Vriska inhales from the bong and presses her lips onto yours, breathing the smoke into your mouth as her tongue teases yours briefly. The kiss ends before it even seems to start and you whine.

Everyone turns back to you and Nepeta leaps in, “What about you, Vriskers?”

She looks puzzled, “What about me? You heard Karkat, it’s a scam.”

“But you’re applying?” You press, looking up at her hazily, and she grins at you.

It seems like she is planning on going to college, even if it’s just because everyone expects it of her, because she works just as hard on her application as anyone else. The pair of you pour over personal essays together, coming up with more and more ridiculous mock answers over fast food, but deep down, you’re worried. While your girlfriend may be smart, her grades are slipping again and it seems like she spends more time smoking in the girls’ restroom than in her classes. She doesn’t even like the taste of nicotine, as you know, but she seems to be completely hooked on it now. When she comes over, the pair of you shiver on the chilly balcony as she lights up.

You ask her if she’s thought about where she’s applying to college. A sigh escapes her lips before she can stop it and she puts the cigarette to her mouth, sucking on it to put off answering the question. But her usual twinkle is in her eye when she replies:

“Wherever you’re applying.”

“Be serious!” You laugh, sticking your hands your pockets in a fruitless effort to warm them up.

Vriska shares her wicked grin with you, “I am being serious! What’s the point of going to college if I can’t be with you?"  
“You’re being serious,” Your heart thuds hard in your chest as you realise.

“Of course I’m being serious,” Again, she slides her arms around your waist and pulls you tightly to her, “I’ll follow you to the end of the earth if that’s where you go, Pyrope.” 

As the weather grows colder, Vriska isn’t always so cheerful and ready to joke with you. She starts creeping in during the night, letting herself in with the key you gave her, and she’s nearly always panting as if she ran all the way from her house. If you tease her and say she should join cross-country, she manages a small smile but you can tell something is off on these nights. Like those nights over the summer, it feels like something is driving a wedge between the two of you. She makes you cassettes and presses them into the player, crawling into bed with you, but something feels wrong. The music feels too sad, too empty, too hopeless.

It’s not every night but they grow more frequent as you both send off your college applications and wait with bated breath to hear back. The pretence between the two of you drops after a while- by which you mean, pretending that everything is fine. Petty arguments start happening, one after another, and you’re not even sure how they start but they seem to drag on for days. If nothing else, Vriska knows how to hold a grudge. She starts cutting class more and more. You start finding excuses not to see her anymore, which is easy when your schedule is packed with classes and extracurriculars. No longer do you have to pretend not to flirt in front of your friends because the air is cold between the two of you. 

The day on the balcony almost feel years away now and you start to wonder to yourself: is this what it’s like to grow apart? 

Numbness begins to take hold of your heart and you find you’re just going through the motions everyday, just doing everything for the sake of doing it. Because it’s just what you do and it’s easier to go along with what everyone expects- not because you really want to do anything. Even when you get your acceptance letter from Alternia, your dream school which boasts the best law program in the country, your excitement is dampened by loneliness. You just want Vriska to sweep you up in her arms and tell you how much she loves you and that she could never stay angry at you. Instead, you sit quietly on the bus with Nepeta: Vriska keeps forgetting to pick you up. Nepeta keeps asking if you’re okay.

“It just- you kind of look like when your mom- you know,” She mumbles, playing with the sleeve of her jacket. You just fix your gaze out the window, watching the grey streets roll past. 

Eventually, you’re forced to confront Vriska about what’s going on when you spot her lurking outside your building with a lit cigarette caught between her teeth. Just a few hours early, you snapped at her over something stupid- she was meant to be your debate partner this afternoon, competing against a local school, and she flaked on you at the last minute. Fury flared up in you, (you’d been preparing for weeks), but she only scowled as you chewed her out. So, when you notice her skulking across the street from the apartment, you’re puzzled.

Shoving on an old hoodie of hers, you let yourself out and strode across the road towards her. You called out, before you reached her, so that her eyes snapped up to meet your gaze, “What, are you here to apologise for standing me up? You can save it.”

For a moment, Vriska doesn’t say anything and you struggle to understand whether she’s pissed or just trying to drive you crazy. She sighs and puts out her cigarette, grinding it under the toe of her sneaker. Her shoulders creep up to her ears like she’s trying to bury into herself; it’s so out-of-character for her that you almost forget to be mad for a moment, taken aback. 

Looking vulnerable, she mumbles, “I’ve been shit recently-“

You can’t help scoffing, “Try all year!”

Despite it all, she chuckles miserably and meets your eyes, “I’ve been shit. You don’t have to forgive me- frankly, I wouldn’t forgive me if I was you. I’ve been a complete bitch to you and-“ She rolls her eyes, “I can’t make up for it. But I wanted to apologise to you anyway.”

You’re not sure what you’re supposed to say to that. Part of you is still angry and feels that she has no right to just say ‘sorry’ as if that’s enough; as if the distance between you can be closed that easily. Part of you just wants her back, even if the two of you have been having issues recently, and just wants to push her up against the nearest surface. Kiss her until you have to come up for breath. Throw yourself on her mercy and let her do whatever she wants with you, just to be close to her again. And a third part, smaller, feels compelled to apologise too. 

Before you can say any of those things, Vriska coughs. 

“My mom found out about us. She said she didn’t want to raise a faggot, that I must be a punishment for her divorce or something,” She confesses in a rush, so you cant get a word in, “I don’t know how. Aranea… I think Aranea must’ve have said something to her.”

Stunned, you say the first thing that comes to mind: “But Aranea doesn’t know anything.”

“That day at the pool,” Your girlfriend looks exhausted, as if just talking about this is draining her, and she drops into a crouch on the sidewalk, “Remember?” The last day you can remember everything being completely normal, “I thought we were alone out there but she must have seen us, through the window, I guess. Kissing. Before you shoved me in the pool.” 

Your brain can’t seem to process what she’s telling you, too shocked to even accept what she’s saying. That not only did her sister see the two of you kiss but that she told her mom. That this happened months ago, during the summer. With a start, you remember how she had started coming over, in secret, to spend the night. You had thought that she wanted to be with you but maybe she just couldn’t bare to be around her family- exposed, her secret out in the open. And how she wouldn’t talk about whatever was making her so unhappy. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” You raise your voice without meaning to, “God, Vriska, we’re meant to tell each other this stuff. I could’ve helped you- we… we could’ve run away or something, I-“ 

She shakes her head, staring at her discarded cigarette butt, “I just wanted to have a normal senior year. With you. I didn’t want to ruin everything for us. But… it was hard to pretend like nothing was going on. I… I just can’t do it anymore.” 

Crouched on the sidewalk, she presses her face into her hands and loses her balance, rocking backwards. She lands on her ass with a thump and it would be funny if the conversation wasn’t so serious and she didn’t look as close to tears as you’ve ever seen her. Cupping her hands over her face, you can't see whether tears are curling in the corners of her eyes but you can see that she’s shaking violently. She’s scared. She’s more scared than you’ve ever seen her. 

Frantic to reassure her, you grab hold of her hand and pull it away from her face. You grip it tightly, as if she’s the only thing holding you onto the earth, and remind her, “We’re so close to graduation. Soon, we’ll be off to college and you won’t have to live with them anymore. It can just be the two of us together.” 

“How don’t you hate me after the way I’ve treated you the last few months?” You don’t know how she manages to force out a laugh, “Even if I hate myself for what I’ve done. How can you still want to be with me?”

Wordlessly, you drop her hand and fling your arms around her shoulders, squeezing her so tightly that you worry you might suffocate her. The skin of her neck is hot, despite the evening chill, and it feels warm against your face. A strand of her dark hair tickles your nose, making you want to sneeze. Eventually, she relaxes into your grip and responds by sliding her arms around you too. You’re not sure where you end and she starts, the two of you are so closely entwined, but you don’t know what else to do. There’s nothing you can say that will fix any of this. 

Things don’t exactly go back to normal after that. Repairing a relationship doesn’t happen overnight, no matter how much you love each other, and it takes a while to patch things up. In the meantime, Vriska is living at your apartment to escape from her family and its fun playing house with her. To you, it feels less and less like two silly little girls messing around and more like a serious relationship, a pair of grown-ups living together, (even if you haven’t quite finished high school). Senior year rushes on, packed with exams and traditions, and the two of you are content to swim with tide. It almost becomes a mantra: “not long now”. 

At first, things are still clumsy and a little awkward. Whenever you squabble over what movie to watch, you hold your breath and worry that everything is turning sour again. But then Vriska gives over and slides her tape back into its place on the shelf. The two of you laugh. Kissing feels unfamiliar, like kissing a stranger, but you soon fall back into rhythm with each other. Soon, being together is almost as smooth as performing an elaborate routine, spinning each other and dipping at all the right moments. Until one day, the letter comes. 

Vriska has not been accepted at Alternia.

“I didn’t get in,” When she tells you, she’s standing in her underwear in your front room. The two of you have just had another enthusiastic round of back-together sex and it didn’t strike you that anything was wrong until afterwards, when she wouldn’t look you in the eye. 

In fact, she’s only been accepted at one school- Prospit- she explains to you. It might be faraway from here, which is why you both applied but it’s even further from Alternia. She tries to make a half-hearted joke about flunking high school but a sob chokes her before she can finish. 

For the first time ever, you see a tear roll slowly down her cheek. It drips from her chin, landing on her collarbone and glistening there. She doesn’t have to tell you where or what she didn’t get into. You know immediately and your heart sinks in your chest. All of your fantasies, (of the two of you arriving at college together in the fall, sharing a cluttered but cosy dorm room, and lounging around on the lush grass of the campus), are shattered into pieces. Thoughts racing, you know straightaway that there’s only one option where both of you can stay together. 

“I’m going with you,” You tell her, firmly, “I got accepted at Prospit too, remember?” You were accepted by every school you applied to, “We’ll just go there together and-“

She cuts in before you can finish, shaking her head, “Rezi… You know you’re my whole world… But you deserve to go to Alternia. It’s all you ever wanted. You worked so hard for it. I am not going to stand in the way of something you’ve been dreaming about since kindergarten.”

“But-“

She takes your hand gently, squeezing it with both of hers, and she looks you directly in the eye, “It’s what your mom would want you to do.”

It’s clear: she has already made up her mind and she’s not going to let you change it, no matter what you do. It’s obvious she had made up her mind about what she was going to do long before she even brought the topic up- Vriska doesn’t do things by halves. It doesn’t stop you from desperately begging her to let you come with her to college, insisting that you loved their campus and while the law program isn’t the best, it’s pretty well respected. You tell her you love her and the idea of being torn away from her again makes you ache. You tell her fuck law school and fuck your dead mom, who definitely doesn’t have a say in any of this. But she won’t hear any of it. 

After endless back-and-forth conversations, you concede that you will part ways with her in the fall. While you’re studying law at Alternia, she’ll be days away (by car) at Prospit working out what she wants to major in. You’ll be on opposite sides of the country, sure, but she’ll always be in your heart- that’s what Nepeta says, pretending to swoon, when you talk to her about your plans. You suppose she did know about you and Vriska after all, not that any of it matters anymore. Rumours are rife since Aranea started spreading what she saw around. You deny all charges, of course, and Vriska’s sister is a bit too much of a gossip for many people to take her seriously.

That doesn’t mean that Vriska is safe at home though- she’s living with you indefinitely until the pair of you go to college and Latula doesn’t bat an eye when you tell her your friend got kicked out and needs somewhere to live. Your sister is pretty cool, not that you’d ever tell her that. 

You resolve to make the most of your remaining time with your girlfriend, rather than moping about the inevitable separation, and if possible, this summer is even better than the last. You ride bikes under the beating heat of the sun, pausing to buy sugary lemonade from homemade stalls, and pedal until your legs ache. When it’s too hot out, you pour over stacks of comics in your bedroom, reading your favourite moments aloud to each other, and snack on junk food. Unlike Vriska, you don’t have a back yard or a pool so the two of you take a picnic to the park and run through the sprinklers. You rub a crumb from the corner of her mouth as she finishes her sandwich and she plants a quick kiss on your cheek. 

One night, when you’re walking home with her, her body is pressed closely against you. It’s a humid summer night and sweat sticking your hair to your neck, despite your efforts to tie it out of the way. Her thigh keeps brushing against yours, denim shorts rubbing against your skin, and your arm is around her. Your hand rests on her waist, making her giggle. 

When you see somebody coming the other way, you don’t think to retract your hand until it’s too late. The tall figure stumbles in your direction, stopping Vriska dead in her tracks and you see her mouth hang open for a second before she pulls her cool back. The boozy woman, bottle still in hand, is directly in front of you now and you recognise her masses of dark hair. 

“Mom,” Your girlfriend says, coldly. You expect her to push her away, like when she used to pretend not to know you at school so nobody would pick on her, but she grips onto you firmly for support. In solidarity, you keep your arm wrapped around her waist.

Her mother’s mouth twists into a cruel sneer as she takes in the two of you standing there, standing as close as a boyfriend and girlfriend would. You’ve never actually seen Ms Serket drunk before, only in passing when you’ve seen her passed out on the couch in the front room, and you’ve barely spoken to her even when sober. The most you’ve ever said to her is polite smalltalk about the weather or school. You expect an argument at the least, perhaps even a fight since your girlfriend has a mean right hook and she knows it, but Vriska just laughs out loud. This seems to take her mother by surprise and the two of you step around her, ignoring how she sways towards Vriska- as if she’s about to make a grab at her. 

“Dykes!” She calls after you, as you walk away, “Bulldaggers!”

“Just ignore her,” Vriska mutters in your ear, merely cackling at the insults.

“Your mother!” The drunk woman staggers forwards, seeming to notice you for the first time, “Would be so ashamed,” She raises one shaky finger to jab it in your direction, her lip curling as you pale slightly, “Rolling in her grave, I’ll bet!”

That seems to break Vriska’s pacifism and you feel her hand tighten around you, before she slowly turns around. You turn with her, heart beating in your throat. Her hand slips away from you and curls into a fist at her side, her scowl deepening as she watches her mother take another step forward. She looks pleased that she’s touched a nerve; but the look of satisfaction quickly turns to fear as her daughter storms silently toward her, drawing her arm back ready. She clocks her mother neatly in the jaw, sending her sprawling, and your hand flies up to your mouth involuntarily. It’s hard not to be impressed.

“Pass that on to Aranea too,” Vriska says, coolly, before turning back to you. 

She grabs your arm with a grin and you both take off running, laughing as your feet pound against the sidewalk.


End file.
